Sarah Bond in interview „How do we create more value for the world“?

Sarah Bond in interview

„How do we create more value for the world“?

Seattle, 1/18/2022

Last week, McKinsey editor Lang Davison interviewed Sarah Bond about Microsoft’s strategy. The CEO of the Gaming Ecosystem Organization (GEO) , which was founded in 2020 and focuses on the needs of game developers for products such as Xbox, Azure and Microsoft 365, said she was confident that Microsoft would soon be at the forefront of the gaming market.

Why is Microsoft increasingly focusing on games? Davison wanted to know at the start. Bond gave several reasons. It’s Microsoft’s mission, he said, „to empower every person and every organization in the world to achieve more.“ Games, he said, are „the most pervasive and fastest growing form of media on the planet.“

With that, Bond hinted that Microsoft is looking to carve out a big piece of what is already a huge gaming market. Because, Bond said, what is certain is „that the future of games is dovetailed with the cloud.“ In this respect, too, the software giant has now conquered a leading position.

In addition, games would require enormous computing power. For Microsoft, that means

For Microsoft, this means that „if we can develop technologies that meet the high demands of game

of game developers, we can transfer that work to other industries.“

There are currently about three billion gamers in the world, he said. About 200 million play on consoles and 1 billion on PCs. If a distribution mechanism were now created through which a developer could reach all potential three billion gamers, development costs would drop significantly while reach would increase. That point is still open at the moment. But Bond has a solution in mind:

Microsoft’s vision for the games industry, he said, is that everyone should be able ,

play any game, wherever they want. The industry does not

„It’s divided by platform or by type of game.

It’s not really possible to play seamlessly across devices.

Now, especially with the advent of the cloud, with tools like

game engines, it doesn’t have to be that way anymore. We’ve realized that we need to change the way

and change the way games are made. That’s the point

where we have an impact that is sustainable.

Potentially, she thinks about, „how do we create more value for the world?“ Her conclusion: “ The most important thing is to make it easier for game developers. Developing games is very difficult. For a triple-A game,three years of development time is great – but it’s usually six years. If we can reduce development and operating costs, we’ve mitigated a significant cost. Equally valuable is that their games can be played anywhere.“

In order for people to play any game on any device, developers need appropriate tools. So we looked at all the tools. Things like cross-network multiplayer. Toolsets are the tools and services that game developers use to create games. The mindset of a game developer is this: if they don’t have the right tool, they’ll code it themselves. So the relentless focus on this group was really important to pick them up where they are and develop the things they needed.